Doing an Illinois warrant search is something that a lot of Illinois natives wish they could do but simply don’t understand how to do such a search. It can be a little tricky, depending on how you try to go about this. Fortunately, if you know what you’re doing it’s not that hard.
That’s actually why we went through the effort to write today’s article. It is our hope that if we can teach people how to do these kinds of searches that they’ll have an easier time finding information about outstanding warrants when they need to.
There are a lot of resources online and the internet really has shaped the way that we’re able to access this information in the present day. We’ll be covering not only how to find warrants in the present, but also how this was approached in the past.
Today’s article is going to be a particularly interesting one, so hang on to your seats. By the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll be able to discuss the process of finding warrants with the best of ‘em at your next dinner party with incredible ease and precision.
The Evolution of Warrant Searches
Over the years, looking for warrant information has changed a lot, as you might imagine. Technology itself has changed significantly in the last hundred years. Did you know that it wasn’t even common to have a phone until the 1960s? That was only 60 years ago.
So, way back when the country was still young, looking at warrant information was a tricky thing. In a lot of cases, warrants would be hung in public places for anyone to see. If the suspect was believed to have fled the city, someone would deliver warrants to other cities.
That is, of course, before the advent of the telegraph. As time passed, the telegraph become more popular, and warrant information was sent from place to place via telegraph because it was a lot easier and quicker than sending someone on horseback to deliver the same exact message.
This evolution in communication was very important because the United States has expanded a lot since it became its own country. At first, the United States was only New England. That made sending messages by horseback somewhat viable. You probably wouldn’t be able to cut off a criminal, but you could still get the infromation to the proper city in time.
When you’re dealing with short distances like Rhode Island to Massachusets that’s fine. The issues start to pop up when you have a criminal that could have fled from Rhode Island all the way to California. You’d have no hope of catching up with the criminal if they ran that way.
So, a telegraph would be sent and it would be able to reach the other side of the country in a fraction of the amount of time that it would take someone on horseback. At this point in time, it was still common to see warrant information posted in public areas.
Then, there started to be an even larger shift. The telephone and fax machine became the primary ways to transmit information. Now, if you’re certain the suspect fled from Rhode Island to California, you could just fax the information over to the proper police department.
That sped things up even more. A telegraph could take upwards of two to four business days, while it only takes a few minutes for a fax to go through. If the fax has a lot of pictures on it, it could take half an hour, but if the fax is only text it could take 1 minute per page to send.
Things have already started speeding up quite a bit, and at this point, you’d have to call or walk into your local sheriff’s department to get the warrant information that you were looking for. This is, in fact, a step back in terms of convenience, but you have to keep in mind that society had changed a lot since then.
By the time fax machines were common enough for every sheriff’s department to use, it was already the late 1960s. The town square of old no longer existed, but there still needed to be some way for the general public to access warrant information.
So, yes, a trip to the sheriff’s department or a phone call is a bit more effort than walking past a bulletin board, but there were also almost 3 million people in Los Angeles. With those kinds of numbers, you have to be ready to make some changes.
Then, in the late 1990s, the internet really started taking off. It was slow, clunky, and if someone answered the phone while you were online you’d be kicked from the internet. Critics claimed that the internet would be nothing but a passing trend, but considering you’re reading this article on the internet we know that they were dead wrong.
It’s almost been thirty years since the mass adoption of the internet, and now we have the ability to stream movies, video games, and shop for anything and everything that we could possibly need from the comfort of our homes with little to no issue.
We have fiber optic internet that boosts internet speed and there’s even an internet company that uses satellites so you can get internet service anywhere in the world. The internet has seriously exploded since the 90s.
Because of this, many sheriff’s departments will use the internet to store records, both for internal and external purposes. This is great because it allows you to easily search for warrants with the same level of comfort and ease as when you shop for bedding on Amazon.
So, how does one go about getting this information on the internet? We’re going to cover this a bit more in the next section so you can be fully informed on the topic and also to make it a little easier to read.
How to Find Warrants
Now that we understand how getting warrant information has evolved over the years, it feels like a good time to look at how you can actually go about getting this information. There are a few ways to try this and you might get varied results.
If you want to get this information directly from the source, you’re going to want to follow these steps:
- Locate your county sheriff’s department’s website.
- Find the warrants page.
- Search for the first and last name of the person in question.
- Sometimes all you need is the last name, it depends on the county.
- Look through the search results.
- Repeat for each county you want to check.
See, it is pretty easy. Well, it’s easy if the counties you need to check in even provide this service. Otherwise, things get a little more tricky, but that’s ok. It’s kind of a craps shoot whether the counties you’re looking in will provide this information or not.
This method is good because you’re going directly to the source but bad because of this lack of universal availability. Some counties won’t even give you this information if you call them, but it could be worth calling if you’re deadset on using this method.
Some counties will also allow you to email them to get this information, but that’s not every county. When counties have that option, nine times out of then you have to send them a picture of your I.D. and they’ll email you back any warrants that you have for your arrest.
That’s not ideal if you’re trying to use this method to find information about other people, but it can work just fine if you want to make sure that you don’t have any warrants. So, what do you do if you can’t find what you need through the police databases? Follow these steps:
- Find a good warrant search service.
- Enter the required information.
- This is usually the person in question’s
- First name.
- Last name.
- This is usually the person in question’s
- Last known state they lived in.
- Hit the enter button.
- Wait a moment for the data to load.
Most of these services are able to provide a whole lot of information in a very little amount of time, which makes them a great choice. In fact, in a lot of cases, warrant search services can provide you with warrant information from all over the country instantly.
That’s pretty impressive no matter why you’re looking for this information, and it can make your life a whole lot easier when you’re trying to find warrant information. This is actually the easiest way to find warrants, especially if your sheriff’s department isn’t so generous with their record.
Get the Illinois Warrant Information You Need, Fast
Warrant searches are a major part of life for millions of people all over this country. They have a variety of reasons to seek out the information that they want, but they can definitely benefit from being able to find this information sooner rather than later.